Earth’s inhabitants (at least the ones we meet) are a sorry lot, devoted to elaborate rituals designed to maintain as undisturbing a milieu as possible. Those that don’t fit in are called “Wolf”, and killed when caught. Glenn Tripole is a Wolf. He escapes by sudden Translation, a method used by the Pyramids to “harvest Components” for the bio-mechanically controlled factories and computers on their planet. Eventually, while part of an 8-person entity wired together to control the production of foodstuffs (for the Pyramids are themselves bio-mechanical), Glenn wakes up and begins a revolution. The Pyramids are destroyed, and the book ends with Glenn heading off to be rewired into a multi-person entity, which will control the path of the Planet and Earth.
Pohl and Kornbluth posit that when calories fall below a certain level, society regresses to the “minor arts”. The society described by them recalls Western stereotypes of Japanese courtesy: over-elaborate, designed to hide embarrassing or disruptive feelings, and to make even conflicts seem as harmonious as possible. P&K are very good at presenting a society merely by describing such interactions, and the characters’ smug assurance that they are being perfectly civilised. No further explanations or descriptions are needed.
But P&K’s depiction of the Pyramids is more impressive, I think. They manage to make us feel that these entities are non-human. When we discover that they are in fact machines, it’s something of a let-down. But the writers must (of course) show that humans (especially the anti-social minority of humans that they call Wolves) can win against anything the Universe throws at them. P&K are what I call Romantic libertarians, the kind that have not understood that a Libertarian polity would be nightmare of oppression.The most difficult task of an SF writer is to invent the Alien: by definition, we cannot think like an alien, so the problem becomes that of showing enough of an imagined alien life-from that we see it as alien. The Star Trek/Star Wars style of aliens as humans in funny costumes doesn’t work. (Star Trek does posit that the various races are all descended from bits of DNA planted billions of years ago by an intelligent species that found itself alone in the universe. Thus, the biological and psychological similarities between Humans, Klingons, Romulans, etc, are explained). In this book, too, a biological alien appears, as a corpse whose mind has somehow been kept functioning by the Pyramids, who were built by this alien’s ancestors. It is non-human in looks, but very human in psychology: it can even mind-meld with the 8-fold entity of which Tripole is a part.
A short book, with a lot of intriguing ideas, better rounded characters than most SF, and well plotted. The showdown between the humans and the Pyramids is a bit too Hollywood, but it fits, which is more than can be said of many supposedly more realistic fictions. **½
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